Runaway Wheels and Flying Debris: The Clear and Present Danger in Formula One

It is often said that F1 has suffered no fatalities since Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna in 1994, but that is unfortunately not true.At the 2000 Italian F1, GP fire marshall Paolo Ghislimberti was struck by a wheel lost from Heinz-Harald Frentzen's Jordan and died at the scene. Just five races later, at the 2001 Australian F1 GP, marshall Graham Beveridge was fatally injured by a wheel from Jacques Villeneuve's car.In both the aforementioned fatal accidents, a wheel became detached from a car as the result of a collision, although wheel tethers are fitted to prevent precisely such occurrences. But in the extreme violence of a collision, especially in the fairly common scenario of a car dragging along a crash barrier, the tethe...

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